2013 International Student Award Winner

ATA is pleased to announce that the 2013 International Student Award has been presented to Sabrina Niebler, who is currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary.

“My choice to go into art has been an incredible experience and has been the root of much growth. During my past four years in the college, I have experimented with many mediums and been faced with new challenges that have created huge developments in my practice. I came to fall in love with the process and aesthetics of tapestry in my fourth year at the college. I am particularly intrigued with the potential for tapestry to relay narrative through the choice of color, material and concept, which then becomes imbedded in the fabric. Tapestry as a process is quite meditative and I enjoy the repetitive motions that become second nature to the hand.”

“These tapestries explore storytelling and also celebrate hand making. Working with traditional and nontraditional techniques and materials, these works explore the medium of tapestry and also its possibilities.

“Medieval Redux: Hoof,” looks back at a portion of a 1480-90 tapestry, Two Scenes from the Poem Der Busant (The Buzzard). In this tapestry I seek to execute a recreation of this tapestry, mimicking techniques and reconstructing forms.

“Nobuko” is a piece that celebrates and honors the life of my grandmother. Faces hold many stories, written in the lines of the face, even though we may not know their details. With this work, I have printed the rich history of my grandmother onto rice paper, spun it into yarn and then wove it into the background of the tapestry. Her story becomes embedded into the fabric of the tapestry, honoring her memory.

The sculptural tapestry “Rooted in the Hand” engages in ideas of the handmade and the hand as a keeper of knowledge. This work too uses rice paper. Text has been silkscreened onto rice paper and spun into yarn which creates the flesh of the tapestry. Once woven into specific shapes, the warp threads were pulled and the pieces sewn together to bring the different parts into one form. It makes a life size hand form with textual knowledge imbedded into its fabric.”